Moh Ahmed’s debut within the half-marathon must wait. He has withdrawn from this Sunday’s Aramco Houston Half Marathon after struggling a hamstring harm in his ultimate tune-up exercise.
“I’m regretfully withdrawing from the Aramco Houston Half Marathon. In my ultimate tune-up exercise on Wednesday, I tweaked my hamstring/hip flexor a bit, such that my coach, Jerry Schumacher, and I felt it will be unwise to line up on Sunday,” mentioned Ahmed in a press release Thursday.
Ahmed’s half-marathon debut was extremely anticipated, given his Canadian data within the 5,000m and 10,000m on the observe. He’s the one Canadian distance runner to have medalled within the males’s 5,000m occasion at an Olympic Video games (Tokyo 2020).
“After an excellent few months of coaching, I used to be actually trying ahead to testing myself over the streets of Houston in opposition to an excellent discipline, but it surely must wait till subsequent 12 months,” mentioned Ahmed. Outdoors of some native highway races and profitable the Canadian males’s 10K title final 12 months, he has not raced the 21.1 or 42.2 km distance.
Rory Linkletter would be the lone Canadian athlete within the males’s elite half-marathon discipline. Linkletter is racing in Houston in preparation for the Sevilla Marathon on Feb. 18, aiming for the Olympic commonplace of two:08:10. His private better of 61:08 was set at this race in 2022 (a Canadian nationwide report on the time). Ljnkletter’s PB is barely 50 seconds behind the Canadian half marathon report of 60:18 held by Cam Levins.
Regardless of Ahmed’s withdrawal, there’ll nonetheless be a big Canadian presence in Houston. 4 athletes can be chasing their Olympic desires within the marathon. Leslie Sexton, 2016 Olympian Lanni Marchant, and Canadian marathon report holder Natasha Wodak will all have their targets on the ladies’s Olympic commonplace of two:26:50, with two spots nonetheless open for Paris 2024. On the boys’s aspect, Tristan Woodfine from Cobden, Ont, returns to the marathon seeking to break his private finest of two:10:51, set three years in the past on the London Marathon. The lads’s Olympic commonplace for Paris is 2:08:10.
